ColorFly Pocket Hi-Fi review

Wired rating

Wired

Excellent sound, can be used as DAC or hi-res audio source

Tired

Retro styling of case and interface won't be for everyone, not
cheap, could incorporate more audio formats

Price

£549

There's no doubt that the price of audio quality has dropped,
and we've all got very used to hearing digital music that sounds
"good enough". Adding a pair of Beats by Dr Dre headphones will almost certainly lift the
quality of what you're hearing through the earbuds that came with
your phone or MP3 player, but if you really want to make a
difference, you need to start with what you put in your player.

Features and performance
Lots of players can deliver WAV files or lossless formats from Apple or Microsoft, but the ColorFly Pocket
Hi-Fi is one of a kind. It's the first portable player capable
of playing 24bit/192kHz hi-res audio files (that's 192,000 samples
per second, with each sample being 24 bits long -- considering CD
quality is limited to 16bit/44.1kHz, it's already over-specified
for most people's listening tastes).

When you can grab yourself a portable music player as part of
your phone for virtually nothing, there's something perverse about
charging £550 for a pocket player. Still, everything about it
screams quality, from the engraved walnut wood case to the
gold-plated USB port. The look is unfailingly retro, with a volume
slider and big, tactile buttons for controlling the music and
negotiating menus. There's also a full-size 6.3mm stereo headphone
jack plug, since the makers expect you to be using it with some
quality "cans" rather than some cheapie earbuds, though there's
also a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, just in case.

Also present is a brace of S/PDIF digital connections so you can
incorporate it into your hi-fi system as an upsampling DAC,
upgrading the quality of the music you're playing from whatever
source. There's 32GB of memory on board, which is a good start, but
you can beef that up by another 32GB via microSD card for WAV,
FLAC, APE and MP3 files. Unfortunately there's no sign yet of
compatibility with WMA Lossless or Apple Lossless.

Is the sound overwhelming? That might be going a bit far. Is it
an improvement on standard portable players? Most definitely.
Comparing MP3 tracks played on an iPhone and on the ColorFly, the latter
sounds more open, more dynamic and more, well, real. And if that's
the sort of thing that matters to you, then the ColorFly may just
be worth the hefty investment.

Conclusion The ColorFly is a high-end hi-fi product with a price to
match. That said, it's not snake oil -- it really does offer a
superior sound and it's flexible too, since it can be used both for
listening on the move or as an improvement to your hi-fi system.
It's the prince of portable players, but only consider it if you
really care that your music sounds as good as it possibly can.

Comments

Excessive for on the bus where you won't hear any difference in sound quality. People with so-called ''golden ears'' are hard pressed to tell the difference between iTunes downlaods at 256kbps and 96kHz and 24-bit - even in an ideal listening condition.